Electronic Couplings in (Bio-) Chemical Processes

During the last two decades, 2D optical techniques have been extended to the visible range, targeting electronic transitions. Since the report of the very first 2D electronic measurement (Hybl et al. in J Chem Phys 115:6606–6622, [2001]), two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy (2DES) has allowed fundamentally new insights into the structure and dynamics of condensed-phase systems (Ginsberg et al. in Acc Chem Res 42:1352–1363, 2009; Jonas in Annu Rev Phys Chem 54:425–463, 2003), producing experiments that measure correlations among electronic states of an absorbing species within complex systems. 2DES is used to investigate photo-physical phenomena involving electronic or vibrational couplings in multi-chromophoric systems [energy transfer in photosynthesis is one great example of how 2DES can disentangle various energy transfer pathways (Brixner et al. in Nature 625–628, 2005; Engel et al. in Nature 446:782–786, 2007; Collini et al. in Nature 463:644–647, 2010)], but also ultrafast photochemical processes in which the tracked molecules change permanently or are heterogeneous (Ruetzel et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 111:4764–4769, 2014; Consani et al. in Science 339:1586–1589, 2013). We divide this chapter according to some of the major areas that have been established thanks to 2DES in the following fields: heterogeneity of systems, excitation energy transfer mechanisms, photo-induced coherent oscillations associated with electronic and vibrational couplings, and complex chemical reactions (Fig. 1). Open image in new window Fig. 1 Main fields impacted by two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy (2DES) in condensed phase. The major discoveries of each field will be described in different paragraphs